Medicine: Artery Welding

When a big artery is severed, the parallel, subsidiary blood pipelines
only rarely function well enough to prevent gangrene; in the war in
Tunisia, gangrene developed in 70% of severed artery cases. The
standard technique of sewing severed blood vessels together, devised by
the late Dr. Alexis Carrel, is successful only 40% of the timeunder
the best conditions. It was therefore a major medical event when Dr.
Arthur H. Blakemore of Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons
and Dr. Jere W. Lord of Cornell University medical school found a new
way of welding broken arteries that succeeds about nine times out...